1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a leakage path simulation system and a leakage path simulation method of predicting a leakage path in a structure formed by joining a plurality of members.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, in a vehicle such as an automobile, pressed steel sheets are joined by such as welding to form a body shell. When there is any gap between parts in such a body shell, water penetration into the interior from outside the vehicle will cause an interference to driving, a formation of rust, a buildup of soil, etc. and therefore it is a necessity to conduct a leakage test on all of the finished vehicles after manufacture.
Conventionally, such a leakage test can be found by methods using a stationary shower tester, the test apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open, No. 6-258171, etc. The shower tester is configured such that water is injected to a vehicle with water spray apparatus such as a car washing machine and, after continuing such water injection for several tens of hours, water penetration into the vehicle interior is confirmed; such a method has a drawback in that actual running conditions are not taken into consideration since the vehicle is tested in a stationary condition. The test apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-258171 takes into account the drawback of the shower tester so that a leakage test of the seal portion of a vehicle door can be conducted in an actual running condition.
On the other hand, it is possible to use a known fluid analysis to predict an occurrence of water leakage in a structure as the solution of a two-phase flow problem of air and water, and if water leakage can be predicted before the manufacture of the product, quality improvement and cost reduction of the product will be expected.
However, in a case in which the structure of interest has a complicated shape like a vehicle body, applying fluid analysis will be difficult since not only it will require a complicated analysis processing by a large scale system taking a large amount of time, but also there is a risk that the solution of the fluid model is not convergent.